ROCKFORD — Improving education and creating jobs in Rockford are keys to getting the city off lists of miserable, dangerous and crime-infested cities, says Bert Sperling, known for creating lists of best and worst places.

Sperling compiles information used by magazines like Forbes where Rockford periodically lands on notorious lists of places with high rates of crime and poverty. Last year, Rockford appeared on Forbes’ list of “most miserable” cities.

Community policing and the “full-court press” are useful policing strategies in improving public safety. The “broken windows approach,” targeting crimes like graffiti and pushing better upkeep of property, also helps but isn’t a long-term solution to overall crime problems, Sperling said.

“There is a culture in place that sort of defies one’s best attempts, or any attempts, to reduce it through a particular method of policing. They all have their place, but it seems like crime goes against all predictions and expectations ... it is more of a by-product of quality of life.”

Once a manufacturing powerhouse, Rockford no longer produces the number of jobs it once did. Rockford’s median household income of $38,864 is far below the state average of $56,576. Unemployment reached 12.9 percent in January, marking the 62nd consecutive month Winnebago and Boone counties had posted double-digit unemployment rates.

Rockford’s violent crime rate — 1,368 violent crimes per 100,000 people, according to the 2012 FBI annual crime report — is higher than other Illinois cities with more than 100,000 people. Springfield’s rate was 972 and Peoria’s was 797 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

Ald. Tim Durkee (R-1) agreed with Sperling that improving Rockford’s quality of life through better employment opportunities and a better educated population are the necessary ingredients to reduce crime and social problems.

But Durkee has grown increasingly less tolerant of lists that he believes are the culmination of lazy journalism.

“When people go back and take a look at the analysis done by these people, it really is lacking,” Durkee said. “These lists have no scientific basis ... They should be discounted and pretty much ignored.”

Mayor Larry Morrissey said the Transform Rockford initiative, which has knit together a coalition of volunteers committed to improving Rockford’s economic and social environment by 2025, will be successful with enough buy-in and support. Morrissey said it will require a strong local narrative about efforts being made to change quality of life.

Morrissey referred to the creation of the Winnebago County Violent Crime Task Force, community policing efforts, neighborhood association partnerships and redevelopment projects among the efforts to combat violent crime in Rockford.

The city recently appeared as No. 3 on Law Street’s list of most dangerous cities under 200,000, behind Flint, Mich., and New Haven, Conn.

The report said Rockford had landed on the list primarily because it has the second-highest rate of aggravated assaults among small cities in the U.S. Nearly 70 percent of violent crime in Rockford — a combination of assaults, robberies, homicides and rapes — were aggravated assaults in the FBI crime data used as the basis for the ranking.

But 2012 was also a year that Rockford saw its violent crime rate fall 1.2 percent, Morrissey said.

“The most important thing (Sperling) said was that statistics and numbers don’t move people. Good stories do. We can’t let others define us by interpreting stats to whatever story line they are pushing.”